U is for UHF
by Jelsemium
Summary: Don finds an unexpected program on an obscure UHF television channel.
1. Chapter 1

U is for Ultra High Frequency

By Jelsemium for the 2006 Alphabet Challenge at Numb3rs dot org.

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters. I'm not trying to make a profit. I wouldn't really do nasty things to any of them. Especially not in this story, which is fluffy enough to use as a pillow.

Author's Note: Not sure if non-Americans are familiar with UHF. It's generally used for local television broadcasts. Before cable, that's where you'd generally see cooking shows, nature shows and science oriented shows.

UUU uuu UUU uuu UUU

After a hard morning of being grilled by a high-priced, ethically-challenged lawyer, followed by a frustrating morning of meetings and report writing, there was nothing more relaxing and comforting than coming home to a loving wife, well-behaved children, an affectionate dog, and a hot, home cooked meal.

Not that Special Agent Don Alan Eppes knew about this from personal experience. It was just a scenario his father had been trying to sell him since he was a kid.

Frankly, Don was ready to buy. He looked at his car clock, then his watch. Both agreed. It was too late to call Robin - especially if he harbored any hopes of her being the afore-mentioned loving spouse.

This meant that he was headed home to an empty apartment. On top of everything else, he still hadn't bought anything for Charlie's birthday, and the party was tomorrow.

He heaved a sigh and began organizing his thoughts. He wasn't due in court until 10 AM tomorrow. That would give him plenty of time to stop at a store and pick up something, if he could only figure out what to buy.

He sighed again. He'd always had trouble picking out presents for Charlie. It hadn't bothered him before. He used to figure that a card and a book store gift certificate sufficiently covered his fraternal duties.

Now... well... now it even bothered him that it had never bothered him. Charlie had always gone out of his way to buy Don cool presents. And now that he and Charlie were on good terms he should be able to pick out something.

Charlie was probably still awake, but Don didn't want to call his brother at, he checked his clock again, 11:37 the day before his birthday and ask for a hint. It looked like he was going to have to ask their father for suggestions.

On second thought, knowing his father's sense of humor, it would be better to ask Larry or Amita. Don was already feeling the lack of wife and kids; he didn't need one of Alan's not so subtle comments about family duties.

Besides, Don was an FBI agent, damnit; he shouldn't have to ask for help! He should be able to pick up on his own brother's likes without consulting an outsider.

Especially since he didn't have Larry or Amita's numbers handy.

He put that thought on hold for the moment and moved on to a more immediate problem - What about dinner? A frozen dinner and the late-late movie? Assuming, of course, that he even _had _any frozen dinners.

Don drummed his fingers on his steering wheel. He'd better grab something before he got home. With his luck, anything in his apartment would give him botulism... or at least gas.

Speaking of gas... a quick glance at his gas gauge confirmed his suspicion.

A quick stop at Arco handled both problems.

Armed with a month's worth of gastrointestinal-distress, Don returned to his empty apartment.

He timed his shower just right, finishing just as his "meal" finished "cooking."

He flopped into an easy chair with a burrito and a Strohs and flicked on the TV. The first thing that greeted his eyes was a newscast about the case he'd just spent 3 hours writing a report on.

click

More news ... this crime was in NYC. - Not his problem.

click

A sitcom with an irritating laugh track

click

Political ad!

CLICK!

A soap opera ... sheesh, as if he'd be interested in seeing some pretty boy gettin' some when he was in a drought...

click

A cop show... not in the mood to see them get all the details wrong.

click

America's Most Wanted ... he saw those faces at work every day...

click

Don worked his way through Network televisions, then cable channels, and finally found himself clicking through the local stuff on UHF.

He was about to give up when he came across some talk show featuring geeks sitting on stage nattering about science. He got enough of that from Charlie… he hit the off button, but the television stayed on.

Don swore and changed the angle that he held the remote to get a better aim at the TV. Then he hesitated because one of the voices that sounded like Charlie.

He blinked and squinted. The picture was not very good… but yeah, that was Charlie on screen. Even through the snowy picture, Don could see his brother sitting on the edge of his seat, eyes sparkling, gesturing so fast as to make his hands mere blurs, as he talked about how difficult it was to generate truly random numbers.

Absently, he took a bite of burrito as he tried to estimate Charlie's age. This obviously wasn't current; Charlie would have said something about being on television. Besides, the Charlie on screen was even scrawnier than Charlie had been last week, as mind boggling as that thought was.

Don squinted, tuning out the speakers' voices. He was pretty good at estimating ages; it was part of his job. He should know his brother well enough to make an educated guess.

One of the other panelists said something that made everyone laugh, and Don was startled to realize that it was Larry Fleinhardt.

So this must have been taped after Charlie had started at CalSci. It was still hard to tell, because Larry didn't look much different. Obviously the man had aged well.

Charlie was talking about his doctorate, so Don guest-imated that Charlie was 18 or 19.

Then Don lost interest in his brother's age. In fact, Don completely lost interest in Charlie because just then the cameraman panned the audience for reactions to the discussion.

Seeing her was a peculiar combination of a warm hug and a sucker punch to the gut. He wasn't even sure why he was surprised. If Charlie was 19, then of course their mother would be there with him. She probably had driven him to the studio for this taping.

Margaret didn't look at the camera, so all Don could see was her profile. She was smiling proudly at Charlie, and Don felt a pang of unreasoning jealousy.

"Stop being a jerk," he told himself. "Mom loved Charlie. She was proud of him. That doesn't mean she didn't love me, too." His mother had always told him that she loved him; that she was proud of him. He had absolutely no reason to be jealous just because some old film clip showed her applauding for Charlie.

Why was it so easy to know the truth and so hard to feel it?

The camera was aimed at the panel again. Don found himself crouched next to the TV, as if a different angle could somehow allow him to see off screen.

Larry started talking about something Don guessed was an obscure tangent; judging by Charlie's grin and the frustrated look on the moderator's face. Don could only bless the eccentric physicist, because the cameraman chose to get an audience reaction to Larry's comments.

Don was vaguely aware that most of the audience was divided between looking annoyed and looking bewildered.

His mother, however, looked amused. She wiggled her fingers at the stage, presumably at Charlie.

He felt a stab of pain in his stomach. Stupid cheap burrito, he told himself, hoping that if he ignored his irrational jealousy, that it would go away. He went back to trying to see the audience after the camera panned back to Charlie and the others.

He relaxed a little when Charlie, in an obvious attempt to get the discussion back on topic, explained how a lava lamp could be used to generate random numbers. Don leaned back in his chair with a bark of laughter. Only Charlie could find a high level math application for kitschy trash.

He settled into a cross legged position in front of the TV, feeling more comfortable now that his jealousy had retreated in the face of humor.

The camera panned again and Don swore when it showed a different section of the audience than the one his mother was sitting in.

He glared at the screen, as if that would somehow cause the cameraman to show his mother.

He was startled out of his foul mood by the sound of his own name. The camera panned back to Charlie.

"So, Don is older than you?"

Charlie bobbed his head up and down, and grinned from ear to ear. "Yeah, Don used to play for the Stockton Rangers, but now he's training at Quantico."

Later, he'd reflect that Charlie's comment had pretty much pinpointed the date, but at that point, he was not thinking logically.

The cameraman that he'd been cursing a few minutes ago suddenly chose to aim at his mother. She was smiling proudly and Don just _knew_ that this proud smile was for _him_, not Charlie.

As if sensing Don's gaze, Margaret turned toward the camera and mouthed, "I love you, Donnie!"


	2. Chapter 2

Epilogue:

Don woke up the next morning on his couch, feeling hung over, although he could see his bottle of beer was only half empty. His unfinished burrito was congealing into a nasty puddle on his coffee table and, when he tried to turn the television on to check the traffic report, all he got was static.

During his shower, he concluded that he'd just dreamed about that show with his mother.

He sighed. It was going to be a nasty day.

Surprisingly, it was not. His testimony went quickly. The jury appeared impressed. When he left the courtroom, the jury was ready to go into deliberations.

He found the perfect present for Charlie in the first store he stopped at.

Then, miracle of miracles… nothing came up at the last minute to prevent him from showing up at Charlie's party on time.

On top of that dinner was, oh, bliss, rib-eye.

Charlie was beaming at the stack of presents and rubbing his hands like the adolescent that Don had seen him as only hours ago.

"Presents first, or cake?" Alan asked, knowing what the answers from his sons would be.

"Presents!" crowed Charlie.

"Cake!" insisted Don. He knew Charlie's curiosity was behind the mathematician's desire to open presents. Charlie was just as eager to watch other people open presents as he was to open his own.

"Are they always like this?" Megan asked.

"Only when they're awake," David muttered.

"Oh, you know them so well," Alan added, sotto voce. Louder, he said: "Don, you can wait until Charlie's finished opening his presents!"

"I'm starving!"

Charlie shot him a disbelieving look, as if Don had said something new and different. "How can you be starving?" he asked, surveying Don's clean plate.

"That's one of Dad's special chocolate cakes," Don said. "Much too good for bratty brothers."

The cake was indeed a marvel: chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting and trimmed with luscious cherries.

Charlie shot him a disgusted look, and Don immediately threw out a distraction by shoving a package towards him. "Here, Math-boy, open mine first."

Charlie grinned and tore into the package without even noticing the lovely wrapping job that the store clerk had done.

Don swiped a cherry off the cake when he thought that nobody was looking.

Alan rolled his eyes, but said nothing; even though he knew that he was going to have to replace all the cherries when it came time to cut the cake.

"Oh, wow! A lava lamp!" Charlie enthused. He turned the box around, admiring the bright graphics of the oozing, glowing slime filled tube.

"A lava lamp?" Alan laughed. "I used to have one of those, but your mother made me get rid of it when we got married. She said it was too… trashy."

"It's not trash, Dad," Don protested. "It's a random number generator!"

"You're kidding," Alan said.

Charlie beamed. "You remembered!" To Don's team, he added. "I once did a paper titled: 'Method for seeding a pseudo-random number generator with a cryptographic hash of a digitization of a chaotic system.'"

"Whoa, got to get me a copy of that!" Colby muttered.

Amita sniggered. "I can make you a copy," she said.

Colby rolled his eyes.

Larry swallowed a gulp of milk. "And Charles has a patent on the method … U.S. Patent 5732138, to be precise" he said.

Alan shook his head. "I don't understand…" he held up his hand. "That wasn't an invitation to elaborate, Charlie."

Thwarted, Charlie frowned a moment. Then he beamed at Don again. "I can't believe you remembered that! That was way back when we weren't… when we didn't see much of each other."

"Well, I saw something on TV last night that reminded me," Don said. "Some science panel on generating random numbers."

"Oh, we did a similar talk… eleven, twelve years ago?" Larry said, almost as much to himself as to Charlie.

"Oh, yeah, I remember," Charlie smiled. "Just around the time Don joined the FBI."

Larry looked at Don curiously. "Is that the panel whereof you speak?"

"Nah, couldn't be," Charlie said. He opened the box and began prying out the lava lamp from its packing.

Larry frowned. "Charles, I'm certain that they had cameras…"

Charlie nodded. "Yeah, they had closed circuit cameras, to make sure everybody in the audience could see the panelists, but the recording equipment malfunctioned. I remember Mom was so mad because they specifically forbade her from bringing in her own video camera."

"Ah, pity," Larry said. "I'd have liked to have seen that panel again."

Charlie nodded. "Yeah, that turned out to be a good one." Then he turned his attention to his present from his father.

Don swiped another cherry and settled back to watch. Charlie had to be wrong about the recording equipment, didn't he? After all, if the panel hadn't been taped, then… Where did the show come from?

He remembered the look on his mother's face when she looked at the camera… Looked at _him_… and suddenly didn't want to know where that show had come from.

He swiped another cherry, caught his father's ironic look and raised an eyebrow.

"Honestly," Alan said, indicating the partially denuded cake. "Some things never change."

Don grinned and nodded at Charlie, who was looking over his new copy of "Home Maintenance for Dummies" with a bemused expression on his face.

"But some things change for the better, eh?" Don asked.

Alan looked from Don to Charlie and back. He smiled warmly. "Yes, my boy, some things do change for the better."

The End

Author's Note: The patent is real. Lavarand™ is actually held by Silicon Graphics, though.


End file.
